A cousin of mine is a tax-lawyer and works for the church. He says the church has lost a lot of money investing in mortgage backed securities. So the church was putting money into the real estate bubble including starting a huge commercial mall project at the end of it. He also said the current presiding bishop is a major shark and liar. Well we all know Burton lied about having all those condos sold.

He said what has happened is the church leadership has brought in corporate managers to manage the church affairs because the organization has grown too big and complicated for the apostles and first presidency to run. A lot is actually hidden from the church leaders. So you have a ring of corruption that is actually separate from the church leadership. He said Gordon B. Hinckley actually tried to change some things but got frustrated and gave up and then after his wife died, Hinckley just seemed to not give a damn. He said Hinckley seemed aware of the problems but they were so entrenched that he would have to fire a bunch of people and he didn't want to expose the church had major problems.

The church is so concerned about having a perfect it won't clean house because it will expose mass corruption and management problems. This is expensive. The only thing that keeps it going is a pretty good cash flow and let's not forget the church can borrow money. How much debt has it got itself into. We might just wake up one day seeing the big hole with all the ants scrambling around it and long-term members going holy shit!

That is good news. Thanks!

Let's see - $500 mm lost in Beneficial Life Insurance for starters. How do you take a hit like that? Oh, and the losses will continue until all claims are paid our over the coming years.

The condos are selling slowly, due to the real estate market crash.

Due to tax issues, the church cannot commingle funds (not for profit and for profit) which means the for profit businesses must support the losers. Additionally, to support the real estate development in Salt Lake, the church must assume substantial debt. What will the church back this with?
Can they pledge temples and church buildings as collateral?

I was also told Monson is a lame duck president. He does nothing and allows the old Hinckley program just to run on it's own momentum. Monson is a stuffed suit and story teller. Not good when you actually own the corporation and don't care what the people below you do. So right now the church is coasting on it's own momentum and if you see, the policies haven't changed at all. It's like Hinkcley never left. I thought the crazy temple building would stop but hey, there are too many Mormons that make money off those things from selling everything from carpeting to wall paper.

The US Government can print it's own money but yet it still runs huge deficits and it cooks it's balance sheet by leaving huge liabilities like pentions off of it. Some of the biggest corporations in the US went belly up due to mismanagement and poor investment. Now these are companies that would file an annual report every fiscal year.

The church on the other hand hides what it does financially. The members have no idea where the money goes. All they see is some expensive buildings going up. I maintain the church builds buildings like Stalin built nice train stations to give the public something to look at. LOL!

Also, look at the church's business track record. It's horrible. They failed in retail (ZCMI). The failed in life insurance which is an industry that has some of the oldest companies in the country. When Norwestern Mutual Life is hedging it's investment with gold, Beneficial Life is hitting the skids shortly after Gordon B. Hinckley was saying the company was sound. U and I sugar was ran out of business for trying to cheat the French company that calibrated it's equipment. They got caught, the French refused to calibrate, and they went out of business. They failed in banking. It goes on and on.

So take this incompetance and fraud and put it in a secretive organization this issues no financial reports at all and it's not a pretty picture. The church could be swimming in huge amounts of debt using it's real estate holdings as colateral for all we know.

The brilliant fools are so scared about any little blip of negative information getting out money is no object to hush anything that would make people question the church. They kept buying forged documents from the same dealer who seemed to have a real edge in finding rare LDS artifacts. Like the old car dealers say, "There's and asshole for every seat."

...that Monson was one of the sharks behind the scenes, that a lot of the Hinckley projects were actually his. Who can say?

Of course he's a lame duck. He's an old man who has been in the 1st Presidency for 30 years now. He's 83 years old, already 6 years older than the average lifespan.

He should be retired and propping up his feet, not running a gigantic religious-themed corporation. You can't expect a lot of innovation from octogenarians.

Do you actually think that Packer would do any better? If he ends up presiding before he loses his faculties, he'll drive away more members and drive down tithing. The others that follow him will be too old and tired to change.

I thought the last bastion of Mormonism would be its financial strength, but the Recession and their own mismanagement apparently have ended that quickly.

But they may well have put their capital into high risk securities to generate extra income to pay the bills they projected to come due. Those securities would have included mortgage instruments and derivatives that instead stopped producing income.

And you can't make any interest on cash these days.

That would leaving the church without an income stream for the for-profit businesses. I don't see much hope of them getting out of that hole soon in this economy.

Sweet.

They certainly are involved in hedge funds. It really bothers me to think that wage earners pay ten percent of their hard earned and fully needed income to faceless corporation just to ensure their place in heaven.

Adult of god Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It really bothers me to think that wage earners pay
> ten percent of their hard earned and fully needed
> income to faceless corporation just to ensure
> their place in heaven.

My brother can't pay his bills... can't buy good food, or put clothes on his remaining kids or grandkids.

At the end of last year, he received a couple grand in a bonus check from his job. "Great," I think. But.. he gave it to the church for "back tithing."

I don't know what angers me more... that he gave it to the "faceless corporation," or that the church willingly and happily accepted it knowing of my brother's financial condition.

If I was god and had a "one true church" that was mine, I'd take some pride in it and give it a little "boost" in the financial area.

"Hey Spencer," I'd say, "plunk down $100 million on Microsoft stock over the next year and hold it for 10."

"Hey E.T., phone your stock broker and put a billion into Sony, Dell, Gateway and Home Depot."

"My main man, the Hinckster, wassup buddy? Say, I need you to double down on Yahoo, Google and Amazon and I'm talking in a BIG way. Bet the farm on this one. By the way, you'll want to get out of Asia toward the end of the 90's, okay?"

Cracks me up that these guys preach Choose the Right, while they wheel and deal away TBMs hard-earned money. Serves the %&*#% right if the ship totally sinks. We can only hope and watch.

heehee



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/18/2010 05:37PM by FreeRose.

He was too busy warning them of the evils of tattoos and that meddling in California politics was a good idea.

Oh for Pete's Sake Way Out that was so very funny!

Thanks, that is an interesting bit of information, Rubicon.

I'm not expert in areas like this I wasnt tought much about busniss land and property laws but, If you are redgesterd a member to deal with things like property ownership and handleing of any offerings? Is it possable that the whole lot of this debt could end up dumped on the members in some way?

I have a minor in economics from BYU and I knew the US was in a housing bubble. How could a prophet of God not see that he's putting the Lord's money into a trap?

Apparently, I'm a better prophet than Hinckster. They lost billions when most experts could have told them that US real estate was highly overvalued.

The White Elephant Mall is a good example of bad investing. They bought up a lot of SLC real estate at the top of the market, invested billions in its development, and now are trying to rent/sale it in the worst Recession since WWII. If they treated other investments the same way, they must have lost a ton of money.

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Matthew 6:19-21



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/18/2010 06:16PM by axeldc.

THE BOOK OF MORMON
CHAPTER 8
37 For behold, ye do love money, and your substance, and your fine apparel, and the adorning of your churches, more than ye love the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted.

Anyone own a skywriting plane that could write Mor 8:37 in the sky over the CoB?

Historically, the LDS church has experienced poverty more than it has enjoyed properity. It has been near bankruptcy and insolvency many times in its history and has made it through.

What I see is that the LDS church is downsizing its ecclesatical side by laying off church employees and outsourcing more and more once paid work to church volunteers.

What I am not seeing is the LDS church selling its real estate holdings, its communication companies, and its agri-business interests. It looks to me that the church is trying to maintain the goose that lays its golden eggs (its capital income producers) by minimizing expenditures it can substitute for free labor.

We will know that the LDS church is in serious financial woes, not when it lays off employees, not when it asks more and more members for free labor, but when it begins selling off its financial empire.

But this time, the guys don't have the Relief Society to bail them out. Since they "correlated" the RS buildings, budgets and programs, they're kinda stuck this time.

or Primary money either! It's the income producing assets that it depends on the most.

Skeptical Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Historically, the LDS church has experienced
> poverty more than it has enjoyed properity. It
> has been near bankruptcy and insolvency many times
> in its history and has made it through.
>
> What I see is that the LDS church is downsizing
> its ecclesatical side by laying off church
> employees and outsourcing more and more once paid
> work to church volunteers.
>
> What I am not seeing is the LDS church selling its
> real estate holdings, its communication companies,
> and its agri-business interests. It looks to me
> that the church is trying to maintain the goose
> that lays its golden eggs (its capital income
> producers) by minimizing expenditures it can
> substitute for free labor.
>
> We will know that the LDS church is in serious
> financial woes, not when it lays off employees,
> not when it asks more and more members for free
> labor, but when it begins selling off its
> financial empire.

I totally agree.

When I worked for the Church, its name was something like Corporation of the Presiding Bishopric, or something like that. It's been a while. But it wasn't the President who was listed as the Head of the Church, but the Presiding Bishop.

A little back story: I've been resigned for two years. I've moved around. Someone got wind that, well, I wasn't a member anymore so they wanted to "get me into the fold" again by sending a sister over to my house to invite me to Single's Ward. She tried getting me to go to all the weeks activities, but I agreed I'd just go to the Sunday classes.

I did it more for her, even though she didn't show up, just to be nice because it was an invitation from a genuinely nice person (even if her intentions weren't *her* intentions, but from some old guy in a suit). I needed a reminder of why I left anyway.

So I get there. We get through the opening drab, some guy makes a comparison to the temples to Star Trek... somehow, and then we get some guy up there talking about keeping money balanced, staying out of debt, and of course the #1 thing you need to do is give your money to the Lord in tithe so "he can sort things out for you".

I'm not particularly religious, but I think next Sunday I'm going to the Baptist church just to remember the difference between services. They will probably actually talk about Jesus in there too.

You know, I often see a lot of people post here that the Top 15 must be a bunch of financial scammers, but it makes more sense to me that they're just a bunch of dumb doofuses like anyone else. I find the possiblity that they are surrounded by a bunch of financial players to be more likely. I hope we actually get some information if things implode.

Look. The church is legally structured so that the standing prophet is the sole owner of the church. That makes Thomas S. Monson worth more than Warren Buffet of Bill Gates. He's the richest man in the nation and looks at what he does. He's basically a slave to the system. A smart prophet would enjoy that wealth and power to the max.

I remember Gordon B. Hinckley complaining that church security wouldn't let him drive anymore. I was thinking you are the prophet, church security works for you not the other way around.

So yeah, I think the apostles and first presidency are not the sharpest knives in the drawer and to be honest, most probably don't even know what's going on at the administrative level. They are the rock stars of the church basically.